Journal 2001-01

Current entries

2001-01-31, Wed (Day 333, temperature at 08:02: 27.8°C, difference: 0.0°C): After reading mail I went up to the publications office in the mid-afternoon. I needed to leave at 16:20 for the psychology sophomore paper meeting and went back to the office for about 20 minutes to start doing the web output stuff but then I needed to leave again at 17:20 to go to Third Wing. Last week I was considering dropping Third Wing since it occurs on the day I have the least amount of open time. However, it is more beneficial to eat dinner at 17:30 on Wednesday as opposed to 17:00 since the first deadline is 17:00 and the computers free up right after the deadline.

I made modifications to my Phoenix scripts for tomorrow after dinner and then went to the office for about a half-hour. I needed to leave again at 20:20 for a philosophy sophomore paper meeting. I returned to the office soon thereafter and finished at 22:30.

2001-01-30, Tue (Day 332, temperature at 08:02: 27.8°C, difference: -0.1°C): Starting this semester I am avoiding wearing a watch whenever I can. This is to de-emphasize scheduled timing. One result of this change is my schedule is less pressured and more flexible, similar to my schedule during break, when I normally do not wear a watch. Since I am focusing on getting things done, I am also getting to bed much later than before. I took a nap after Kako’s class today in the late afternoon until ten minutes before dinner at 17:00.

I went to a lecture about the fall of the Roman Empire at 20:00 with Jesse and Tom in LPAC Cinema. After finishing reading my e-mail I went to the office. The far-left G4 was spontaneously shutting off on Justin and I determined that the likely cause of the problem was that the computer was too damn hot. The best working G4 of the main four just happened to be the coolest one (27°C processor temperature) and the fan on that computer was blowing out the greatest amount of air. The hot G4 on the other hand had a less powerful air outflow and was topping out at 91°C although the temperature would periodically swing downward considerably.

I found a processor cycling option in the Energy Saver control panel in the advanced panel, which my iMac does not have. As soon as I turned this option on, the processor temperature dropped to a much lower level. However, this cooldown would of course only happen when the computer was idle. While it was being used, as I confirmed during testing, the temperature would rise back to 91°C. So hopefully by the processor not being hot all of the time, the computer will not shut down unexpectedly. However a swinging temperature induced by the processor cycling may introduce other problems, similar to powering on and off the computer multiple times. I’ll have to see about it.

2001-01-29, Mon (Day 331, temperature at 07:06: 27.9°C, difference: 0.0°C): In the afternoon I read some e-mail and then took a nap. I was woken up by this very bright cloud reflection that was streaming into my room. I backed up this evening and did other ordering things in my room. At 22:00 I went to Kirby to see “Earth Girls Are Easy” (1989) presented by SWIL. This is a nice and simple 1980s movie.

2001-01-28, Sun (Day 330, temperature at 08:20: 27.9°C, difference: +0.1°C): I watched the Super Bowl with my roommates in the third floor lounge. The game was not very smooth football strategy-wise. During the third quarter, three touchdowns were scored in under a minute.

2001-01-27, Sat (Day 329, temperature at 08:01: 27.8°C, difference: +0.3°C): It seems that my walks are just as helpful as they always have been, as they give me a time to relax and think about things.

The movie tonight was the same as last night’s movie for some odd reason, so I spent most of today catching up on e-mail.

2001-01-26, Fri (Day 328, temperature at 08:01: 27.5°C, difference: -0.4°C): I spent this morning and later in the day writing three days worth of journals since this week I didn’t have much time to do much of anything in particular. I walked in to mythology and soon ran into a dead end as the seating configuration was pushed back so for one to get to the back row, you needed to go around the far side. This change sort of unnerved me and I also had to move a chair that was behind my chair.

After lunch I started taking care of things that needed to be done this week and depended on offices being open. By chance, the things I needed to do followed in a counterclockwise fashion from Willets. The last thing I needed to do was to go to McCabe to try to staple the Kako reader. I ran into trouble right away with the staplers, which happened before, but I felt that I should return back to my room.

Jesse, John, Tom, and I went to the showing of “X-Men” at LPAC at 19:30.

2001-01-25, Thu (Day 327, temperature at 08:01: 27.9°C, difference: +0.1°C): I had an appointment this morning with Dr. Robbins, the oral surgeon who did my wisdom teeth extraction earlier this month. Dad drove me to the dentist and back before my first class at 09:55.

After lunch, I did what I could in the next hour before Kako’s class and I did get the basic version of The Phoenix Online up on the site by then.

2001-01-24, Wed (Day 326, temperature at 08:10: 27.8°C, difference: -0.1°C): Today was a very untypical day. The day started at 08:00 with a rush to get out the door so I could go to my high school to take pictures of the construction project. Normally I take pictures of the project during break, but snow, rain, and dental surgery made doing it this winter break not possible. I arrived at Ridley High School at around 09:00 and had until about 09:45 to take a roll since I wanted to get back to Swarthmore in time for class. However, I normally take an hour to fill a roll. I started taking pictures at 09:12, which meant that I needed to go twice as fast as I normally do. I did that by moving quickly and by taking as many good pictures as I could from a single place I was standing at. I finished at 09:50 and did get back to the campus just on time.

The Chinese New Year is today and Lillian brought a small gift for the class to commemorate the occasion. I went to lunch and met up with John and Tom, John being exhausted from basketball class that the two came from. The afternoon starts and I’m prepping to go up to the publications office for most of the rest of the day when Jesse presents me with a challenging computer problem. He installed the newest final version of AIM on his Zip disk but now all of the sudden when he inserts the disk he gets an unreadable/initialize? message. The same thing happens on my computer so I try to make an image of the disk with Disk Copy. Since the disk wouldn’t mount it looked like I couldn’t make an image of it.

I then ran Disk First Aid and it said that there was a minor problem with the master directory block (MDB). However, it wouldn’t fix the problem because something else was using the disk; the Finder didn’t mount the disk but it still was getting in the way. I found out how to image the disk by starting up with extensions off and sticking the disk in while the main Disk Copy window was active. However, this image was unusable since the MDB problem prevented the image from mounting.

TechTool Pro was next and the usual idiosyncrasies of the program manifested in the form of crashes, freezes, and general confusion about certain options. The directory was too corrupted to retrieve the data, but by scavenging the entire disk a structure to retrieve the data was created. I gave the rescued data to Jesse and once he confirmed that everything was there, I reformatted the disk, with the hopes that by doing a surface format the Zip disk will be fine in the future.

I then went to the office sometime after 14:00. I started doing The Phoenix web output stuff before 21:00 and continued doing so until about 23:00. When I got back to Willets, the study break was stationed in the middle of the third south hall, blocking me from directly returning to my room. Jesse and Tom went around the group to meet and talk to me and then we returned to our rooms on the other side of the group by passing through the second floor.

2001-01-23, Tue (Day 325, temperature at 08:00: 27.9°C, difference: +0.7°C): Jesse, John, Tom, and I walked up the hill this morning for class. Allen’s physiological psychology class was first and then I went to lunch. In the early afternoon was Kako’s cognitive class that John and I are in. After Kako’s class I tried upgrading the scripts on the iMac to match what I did at home. I also was synchronizing the scripts with what were stored on Milhouse, the student publications server.

Things were going fine until I got to the server-side include (SSI) AOL scripts. While I could parse a normal file fine, I ran into problems parsing an include, which requires all files to be looked at and possibly changed. This trouble continued after dinner and since I was so focused on fixing this problem I got a little sick and then I finally just gave up on it for the time being. I think what broke this part of the script was the slide shows, since they add many files to the set to be parsed. However, the check for include or make ssi scripts just seem poorly written so I’ll need to look into it later.

I went up to the publications office sometime around 20:00 and stayed there until 00:00. I went up there just to hang out and to fix computer problems if they come up.

2001-01-22, Mon (Day 324, temperature at 10:01: 27.2°C, difference: +2.0°C): I got up at 07:00 today and did various things before classes started at 10:30. Both my classes today were larger than the Prof.’s and I thought. I was hopefully expecting a class size like set design (eventually two including myself) but instead the classes are about the size of Linguistics 1.

Sharples was really crowded. I went to the bookstore afterwards and bought two baskets worth of books just for the two classes I had today: Chinese Civilization and Classical Mythology.

In the afternoon and evening I got various things in order in my room.

2001-01-21, Sun (Day 323, temperature at 13:42: 25.2°C, difference: [N/A]°C): A snowstorm overnight made moving back slightly more difficult as the car needed to be cleared and I needed to be careful to not slip on the ice. I arrived at Swat after 13:00.

I started unpacking and I filled out the Apple Mac OS 9.1 upgrade form. I realized that my stamps were 33¢ and not 34¢ so I needed to find 1¢ stamps. I went to dinner with Jesse and Tom who got back last night and after that I went to the Swarthmore post office to buy 1¢ stamps. Now I know why there are so many confused people standing in front of the postal vending machines in the Ridley Park post office. There is something about these non-denominational first class stamps that lead to confusion.

I paid $6.80 for 20 34¢ stamps, somehow thinking I was getting twenty 1¢ stamps, even though I did the unit price calculation beforehand and got 34¢ per stamp. I realized that I didn’t have any 1¢ stamps so I went to the next vending machine panel and paid 35¢ for a 34¢ stamp and a 1¢ stamp. I got about three of these. So I solved the problem with the current letter and the next two but I still have unmatched 33¢ stamps.

Once I got the order mailed and checked my mail in Parrish I went upstairs early to the publications office for the Phoenix staff meeting at 19:30. The meeting was about an hour and a half and when I got back to Willets, I chilled in Jesse and Tom’s room along with John who arrived at about 19:30. John and I were there until soon after 00:00.

Journal 2000-12